By Robert D. Michaux An opinion from the Fourth Circuit published just before the chaos of the 2025 holiday season is a good reminder that when it comes to protecting your trade secrets, more is definitely better. In Samuel Sherbrooke Corporate, Ltd. v. Mayer, Case No. 24-2173 (4th Cir. Nov. 18, 2025), the Fourth Circuit...Read More
By Robert D. Michaux The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that for a copyright owner possessing a timely claim, there is no time-based limit for obtaining damages for past infringement in the Copyright Act. How far back can a copyright infringement plaintiff reach for damages? Before the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision May 9, 2024 in...Read More
By Robert D. Michaux Federal judicial caseload statistics from U.S. courts indicate a decline in the number of appeals concerning intellectual property filed in and pending before federal appellate courts over the last decade. Only a small fraction of rulings by federal appellate courts are formally published, with unpublished opinions having no legal weight as...Read More
The U.S. Supreme Court recently held that the provisions of the Lanham Act prohibiting trademark infringement and unfair competition are not extraterritorial and extend only to claims where the claimed infringing “use in commerce” occurs in the United States. The decision, Abitron Austria GmbH, et al. v. Hetronic International, Inc., is a major setback for...Read More
Generative AI is a type of artificial intelligence system that creates new data from patterns and structures learned from enormous amounts of training text and data such as books and websites, images, sound recordings and videos. In response to prompts, generative AI will produce realistic, human-like text and conversations, and some applications will create images,...Read More
The Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act (VCDPA), a comprehensive privacy law that will affect many businesses either based in Virginia or doing business with or marketing to consumers in the Commonwealth next year, has been amended by the 2022 General Assembly. The amendments relate to consumer requests to delete personal data held by a business,...Read More
The U.S. Copyright Office issued final rules for how business entities can designate agents to receive Copyright Claims Board (CCB) claim notices and how libraries and archives can preemptively opt out of CCB claim proceedings. The CCB, which will eventually provide a voluntary alternative to federal court, is designed to be an efficient, cost-effective forum...Read More
